Three Islands Media

01/06/2026

The Virgin Islands economy grows stronger when we expand the imagination of tourism. Recently, the Virgin Islands Architectural Center honored artist Elroy Simmonds and the late preservation advocate Gerville Larsen, two cultural pioneers who understood that art, architecture, and heritage are economic assets as much as cultural ones.

Around the world, cultural and heritage tourism accounts for hundreds of billions of dollars in visitor spending each year. Historic districts, museums, architectural tours, and preservation sites attract travelers who often stay longer and spend more than the average visitor.

The Virgin Islands Architectural Center is working toward a future where local students can be trained in preservation trades and historic restoration. As graduates enter the workforce, they can help restore historic buildings, strengthen our towns, create skilled jobs, and support families who own heritage properties that have been difficult to maintain.

Every restored building tells a story. Every preserved streetscape strengthens the visitor experience. Every skilled craftsperson adds capacity to our economy.

Virgin Islands Architecture Center for Built Heritage and Crafts

29/05/2026

As part of a broader effort to reimagine how the Virgin Islands of the United States visually represents itself, Three Islands Media was commissioned through its director, Chalana Brown, to photograph the cover of the Virgin Islands phone book. The initiative reflected a growing desire to center the people, traditions, and cultural memory of the territory rather than relying solely on tourist-facing imagery.

Photographed at the Whim Museum on St. Croix were cultural bearers Eldred “Edgie” Christian and Gilbert “Gilly” Hendricks,both longstanding stewards of Quelbe music through the Ten Sleepless Knights. Since the creation of the photograph, Edgie has passed, transforming the image into both documentation and memorial.

The setting of the photograph carries its own historical gravity. The Whim Museum, preserved within the landscape of a former plantation estate, holds layered stories of African endurance, labor, subjugation, humor, artistry, and survival. Within those grounds, the photograph connected living Virgin Islands traditions to the historical spaces where Afro-Caribbean communities preserved culture despite colonial violence and economic exploitation.

The image also arrived during an important period of public recognition for the Ten Sleepless Knights, whose members have since been honored through legislation designating a space in Limpricht Park in their name. For decades, the group has safeguarded Quelbe, the national music of the Virgin Islands, carrying forward a tradition rooted in oral storytelling, satire, community gathering, and the lived experiences of Crucian people.

Through this commission, the photograph became part of a larger cultural archive. It documented artists whose work helped preserve Virgin Islands identity across generations while asserting that the territory’s image should be shaped by the people who continue to carry its memory, sound, and stories forward.

27/05/2026

27/05/2026

27/05/2026

Braided interplay.
Heeled sandal, Women’s Fall-Winter 2026
by Antonin Tron

27/05/2026

The iconic patchwork fabric has been helping Ivy types survive sticky summers for generations, and it still works like a charm.

27/05/2026

Pucci Eyewear 2026.
Through the mirror.

Artistic Director:
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Movement director: .j.h.a.r.p.e.r
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27/05/2026

Heritage and Arts Highlight! Arts and heritage continue to shape the tourism economy of the Virgin Islands of the United States because culture gives people a reason to connect deeply with place, memory, and community. This photograph was taken during Embodied Histories, Art, Archive, Memory in the U.S. Virgin Islands, a project initiated and organized by Monica Marin with art historians Bart Pushaw and Thor J. Mednick, alongside co-curator Juliana Berry and project assistant Lydia Myrick, and hosted by Crucian Heritage and Nature Tourism (CHANT). The project was supported by the St. Croix Foundation, the Terra Foundation, and NEFA.

During the gathering, Priscilla Hintz Rivera Knight of Bajo el Sol Gallery, Art Bar Cafe & Rum Shop in St. John spoke about traditional basket weaving and the generations of St. Johnians connected to the practice. Spaces like Bajo El Sol help carry Virgin Islands stories, craftsmanship, and living memory into new audiences and international conversations, strengthening both cultural preservation and the creative economy.